Spanish holiday island to continue limiting British tourists – despite fuming locals
A POPULAR Spanish holiday hotspot will go ahead with plans to limit British tourists - despite uproar from locals.
Lanzarote, in the Canary Islands, previously announced plans to welcome fewer holidaymakers from the UK.
As part of a new tourism strategy, which was unveiled last month, Lanzarote plans to declare itself a "tourist-saturated area."
The move will see the island welcome fewer tourists who have greater spending power.
More than half of all holidaymakers arriving in Lanzarote come from the UK, but the island's council wants to reduce their dependence on Brits.
The President of the Lanzarote Council, Dolores Corujo, confirmed the plans for the island to move away from its reliance on British tourists.
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She said: "We are going to continue to promote the debate on the limits to growth even though they try to gag us with the ghost of fear of damage to the image of Lanzarote."
But since the announcement, the plans have received backlash from locals and other organisations.
Opposition councillors criticised Lanzarote's government of damaging the island's tourism image.
And according to the , the director for the Spanish Tourist Office in the UK has insisted that Spain would not "discriminate by type of visitor.
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While the island's government has yet to finalise details of the proposed plans, talks have taken place among residents, business owners and ecologists in Famara where all parties agreed that the area was saturated.
Despite ideas such as limiting access to beach roads, nothing has been confirmed.
Lanzarote isn't the only tourist hotspot in Spain that plans to reduce its reliance on Brits.
The Balearic Islands, which include Majorca, Menorca and Ibiza, have become the latest holiday destination in Spain to ask for fewer Brits.
The local government says 16,475,579 holidaymakers arrived in 2022 and this will be the "absolute ceiling" for future years.
The intention will be to decrease this figure and introduce new control measures, such as spreading out the seasons and encouraging tourists to stay in new areas to alleviate those already saturated.
The 16,475,579 mark achieved in 2022 is just 397 fewer than 2019, pre-Covid, and just 76,000 less than in 2018, the year which marked the all-time high.
Spain recently scrapped its final Covid restrictions in a boost for holidaymakers.
